I'm genuinely shocked at the number of people in this thread who are perfectly willing to have the whole of society filmed and monitored, just so they can feel a little safer, even in the absence of evidence that CCTV makes a blind bit of difference.

I'd also ask people to look toward the future, and ask yourselves if you think the elected government will always be good and accountable?

If there's any chance, any chance at all, that some political party gets in power that doesn't have your best interests at heart, they'll be fucking laughing as they line up their enemies one by one using all these powers we've handed over so willingly. The slightest chance that the enormous data monitoring systems we're allowing can be turned against someone who has done nothing wrong is enough for me to despise it. And sadly, as has been stated, and demonstrated, they have already been misused. The case of the family, monitored by a local authority using anti-terrorist laws, in order to check they weren't lying to get their kid into a school is the only example a person should need to e convinced this can all go wrong.

Anyone who is dismissing the possibility of CCTV being a bad thing is either an idiot, or playing devil's advocate as far as i'm concerned.